I don’t know about you, but I can relate to what Goins says at the beginning of his book:

How we spend our days, according to Annie Dillard, is how we spend our lives. If that’s true, then I spend most of my life waiting. Waiting in the checkout line at the grocery story. Waiting to rent a movie. Waiting for the movie to end. Waiting to turn thirty. Waiting for vacation. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Life is an endless series of appointments and phone calls and procrastinated tasks that need to, but sometimes never, get done. It’s a long list of incomplete projects and broken promises that tomorrow will be better. It’s being put on hold and waiting in office lobbies and watching that stupid hourglass rotate again and again on the computer screen. It’s load times and legal processes – long, drawn-out, bureaucratic systems that leave sitting, watching the clock. Life is one big wait.

So it is, the in-between. The waiting.

I read this book the week waited to hear from our agency about traveling to Ethiopia to meet our son for the first time. Goins writes in a manner very similar to Donald Miller. There aren’t a whole lot of stats or next steps, but a lot of stories to help you see how to wait and walk through the in-between times of life. Because, as you’ll realize by the end of the book, most of your life is “the in-between time.” I love this, “Waiting is the great grace. It’s a subtle sign for those with eyes to see, reminding us there is work yet to be done – not just around us, but in us.”

The in-between times is about learning to be present and enjoy all of life. As Goins puts it, “We all want to live meaningful lives full of experiences we can be proud of. We all want a great story to tell our grandchildren. But many of us fail to recognize that the best moments are the ones happening right now.”

Here’s a great way to end this review from the book:

People don’t hate waiting when they know what they’re waiting for. What drives people nuts, though, is the postponements that happen for no apparent reason, the arbitrary delays and setbacks. We hate waiting for the things we think we deserve now, not later: the spot at the front of the line, hot food from the kitchen, the best job in the company. It’s not the waiting we dislike; we understand some things take time. What we loathe is the time after what we deem to be an appropriate amount of waiting. We can all be patient – to an extent – but then we have our limits. Our problem, then, is not one of impatience, but entitlement.

If you find yourself being impatient, waiting, trying to be in control or are in between something right now. This is a book worth picking. I enjoyed it immensely and was challenged by my sense of entitlement and when I think things should happen.